Comment: How the ‘deep state’ emerged as a threat to American liberties and a sitting president

The unseen government or “deep state” has become so powerful that it threatens Americans’ freedom and the new president, an analyst said.

“Last week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that members of the intelligence community — part of the deep state — now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes. Their principal foe today is the president of the United States,” former judge Andrew Napolitano wrote for Reason.com on Feb. 23.

President Donald Trump: ‘The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time.’

President Donald Trump today tweeted: “The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time. They can’t even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S.”

Not only has Trump condemned the myriad of leaks coming from the intel community, but has also become “a victim of it,” Napolitano wrote.

“The surveillance state regime today permits America’s 60,000 military and civilian domestic spies to access in real time all the landline and mobile telephone calls and all the desktop and mobile device keystrokes and all the digital data created and used by anyone in the United States,” Napolitano wrote. “The targets today are not just ordinary Americans; they are justices on the Supreme Court, military brass in the Pentagon, agents in the FBI, local police in cities and towns, and the man in the Oval Office.”

“The British system that arguably impelled our secession in 1776 is now here on steroids.”

“Enter the outsider as president. While he was president-elect, the spies told him they knew of his alleged misbehaviors — vehemently denied — in a Moscow hotel room.

“Last week, his White House staff was shaken by what the spies did with what they learned from a former Trump aide” – former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn, himself a former spy, “spoke to the Russian ambassador to the United States in December via telephone in Trump Tower. It was a benign conversation. He knew it was being monitored, as he is a former monitor of such communications. But he mistakenly thought that those who were monitoring him were patriots as he is. They were not,” Napolitano wrote.

“They violated federal law by revealing in part what Flynn had said, and they did so in a manner to embarrass and infuriate Trump.”

Napolitano continued: “Why would they do this? Perhaps because they feared Flynn’s being in the White House, since he knows the power and depth of the deep state. Perhaps to send a message to Trump because he once compared American spies to Nazis. Perhaps because they believe that their judgment of the foreign dangers America faces is superior to the president’s. Perhaps because they hate and fear the outsider in the White House.

“The chickens have come home to roost. In our misguided efforts to keep the country safe, we have neglected to keep it free. We have enabled a deep state to become powerful enough to control a powerful president. We have placed so much data and so much power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, opaque spies that they can use it as they see fit — even to the point of committing federal felonies. Now some have boasted that they can manipulate and thus control the president of the United States by selectively revealing and concealing what they know about anyone, including the president himself.”

The current state of affairs was “brought about by the maniacal passion for surveillance spawned under George W. Bush and perfected under Barack Obama — all with utter indifference to the widespread constitutional violations and permanent destruction of personal liberties,” Napolitano wrote.

“This is not the government the Framers gave us. But it is one far more dangerous to human freedom than the one from which they seceded in 1776.”

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